he was too sick to be anywhere but in bed. I went over with a carriage to his bachelor quarters to bring him to my own house. The poor fellow said that he had in his hands some arrangements for vaccine which were to be sent to such and such regiments at the South. I told him that I would see to the vaccine, and went to the State House for that purpose. There was Henry Lee, well known to all Harvard men as the chief marshal, for many years, of their processions. He was an officer in Salignac's Drill Corps, and at that moment was acting as a volunteer military aid to Governor Andrew. While I waited for a letter I needed, Lee asked me if I could not go down to Fall River that afternoon and drill the Fall River companies. I was most eager to go, but I had in hand these vaccine arrangements, and many other duties of the same sort, and I made the great refusal." Which story I tell because I think if I had gone down to Fall River and had my experience of a drill-master's life, I should probably have stayed with the army until the war was over. Who knows but these might be the memoirs of a major-general, as Bayley's would be?

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But I laid down the rule for myself that I

VOL. II. N

would not go in person to the war until I found nothing to do every day at home.

When all was over, on the 22d day of December, 1865, Governor Andrew had ordered a parade of representatives of each of the sixty-six Massachusetts regiments, who were to march to the State House and leave their smoked and ragged colors there. I noticed in the morning paper that they would pass our church. I sent a note to the chairman of the right committee, and the women opened the church; they lighted their fire, and when, that morning, one or two thousand men marched through Union Park, hot coffee stood in full pails on the steps, with enough for every man of the command, and they broke ranks and drank. In our little

museum at church we show receipts of the State of Massachusetts for the flannel underclothes we sent them in April, 1861.

Of other personal reminiscences, the papers which make up this chapter are all that I may now use. The first is a letter from a gentleman, in an important official position in Washington, describing his impressions as to the army, as he saw it in August, after the defeat at Manassas, or, as we say, Bull Run. Even after thirty years it seems worth while to show out of

what inexperience Grant's and Meade's armies began.

"WASHINGTON, August 6, 1861.

"MY DEAR SIR: I have received your note with inclosure, of 2d inst., and am sorry we are not to be more closely associated. However, there is much to do everywhere now, and what is most important is no longer in Washington. Yet one needs to be at Washington to see into what a terrible rut of inefficiency and humbug and twaddle our poor Nation has got. There seems no end to buncombe; we are saturated with it high and low.

6

"Now what is the fact about this noble, etc., gallant, patriotic army? It was, in large part, a miserable rabble of sentimental actors and foreign mercenaries.' It had no real discipline, only a play of it, or so much of it as was pretty. Its officers were knaves and fools. They had never read history, they knew not the simplest elementary conditions of war, and they never really expected to fight, certainly not to conduct fighting. The consequences of the Bull's Run1 affair prove this if they prove anything. The exceptions count by thousands, it is true, but the

1 This was this gentleman's spelling. Bull Run is said to be correct.

central fact is that the army was good for nothing. I really believe that three regiments of regulars well commanded could take the capital to-day, if there were no regulars in it. And how does the country behave? The cruel, savage, senseless poltroons who took to the ambulances and ran over the wounded and left them to die of thirst, taking their water for themselves -the surgeons themselves who went mad with fright have you hung any of them in Boston ? They haven't been named yet; nobody has tried to get their names. But the vermin of various varieties send their names to a New York newspaper to testify that they deserted in spite of the earnest request of their officers on the eve of the first engagement, after having played soldier at the public expense three months, because 'their time was out' and they wanted to see their families'! God save their children from living. And the people of New York let these fellows return to their business.' Does the history of the world exhibit traces of the existence of anything meaner than that? And the men who did behave well- can you name them? Who cares for them? They are lost in our habit of buncombe.

6

"We must strain every nerve to put things on

an entirely different footing or we are lost. The very idea of order, precision, punctuality, complete honesty, and exact responsibility is generally lost among us. A man does the meanest things and does not know it; the most gallant things, and unless the spread-eagle takes them up nobody else knows it.

"The women terribly want something to do. Couldn't they be got to form committees to hunt deserters and cowards, knavish contractors and speculating legislators, officers who give no care to their men except for parade and who throw away their coats in battle lest they should be known for officers, soldiers who can't be got to brush their coats or wash their faces or take care of a sick comrade or look twice at an enemy?

"Until in some way or other something allied to discipline can be forced upon these creatures sent here for soldiers, all sanitary preaching is about useless. There ought to be a few hundred men hung here to-morrow. Then we might ask commanding officers to give orders for the health of their men. But orders go for nothing now. They are almost of as little value as promises.

"Now I've told you the whole story. The Sanitary Commission can do nothing but poke